Dear Editor,
Lincoln Lewis is a very respectable labour leader; he is also quite a decent man, known for speaking his mind and being fair-minded in his public commentaries. And, this is quite a tall order in a country where race is a major factor in practically all public discussions.
But he confuses me in his letter; is he for constitutional reform (CR) or against it? (‘There must first be understanding of the issues before the constitution can be reformed’, SN June 24).
We need CR for these reasons:
(1) Limits should be placed on executive power. Presidents cannot have power to grant concessions of millions of acres of forest lands to favoured companies or sign a secret contract with ExxonMobil without parliament’s ratification. Execu-tives cannot give 50% or 100% increases in salaries to ministers without parliament’s approval. The checks and balances principle is largely missing from Guyana’s constitution.
(2) There should be no more than 53-members of parliament, each member representing one of 53-districts in the country. The 10-additional members were added on to help one or another party gain an inappropriate advantage. It is duplicitous.
(3) Remove the requirement for a pre-election coalition of parties. (The principle of allowing parties to coalesce at their free will after elections is a universal principle and has worked well for more than 100 years.)
(4) We need CR to mandate ethnic balance in the army and police and indeed all branches of the government bureaucracy.
(5) We need CR to lay down a test of what constitutes a genuine multiracial party, and then ban ethnic parties from contesting national elections.
(6) Ethnic discrimination is institutionalized in Guyana. We need CR to lay down laws and courts to outlaw this type of discrimination.
(7) No party should be allowed to take power if the party leader does not command a majority in parliament. (Donald Ramotar did not command a majority in parliament, yet he was allowed to become president; this laid bare a major flaw in the constitution).
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud